Leopold
Godowsky (1870 - 1938)
Piano Music
Vol. 1
Immortalised among
the greatest pianists of all time, intellectual and artist without peer, the
Polish/ American-naturalised Leopold Godowsky was born in Lithuania. A Wunderkind, largely self-taught, protege of
saint-saens, "the superman of piano playing... a pianist for
pianists" (Huneker, 1901), teacher of Jan smeterlin, Issay Dobrowen and
Heinrich Neuhaus, friend of Hofmann, Rachmaninov and Albert Einstein, his were
the standards others tried to copy. His famous Berlin
debut with the Philharmonic (Beethoven Saal, 6th December 1900), in the city
where Busoni was emperor -when he played Brahms's First Concerto, the
Tchaikovsky B flat minor, paraphrases on the Chopin studies and Weber's Invitation
to the Dance, and several encores including the scherzo from saint-saens's G
minor Concerto -was sensational in the Lisztomanic understanding. Huge,
chandeliered, opulent, Bohemian, his New York salon was a
mecca of its time and place. Here, according to friends, you could hear
Godowsky the transcendentalist, "the dramatist and colourist" , play
and take risks as he never allowed himself to do on the public stage. All
"the significant artists of the day assembled at Godowsky's home with the
regularity of homing pigeons," remembered Abram Chasins. "Wherever he
hung his hat, whether in Europe, Asia, or the Americas, there arose a salon, a salon in the tradition of the
Romantic era which attracted every intellectual within range. No musician was
more capable of constantly gathering around him creative companions in so many
fields of artistic work. Abroad, Dyagilev, Nijinsky, Gide, Matisse, and Derain
were as much apart of the Godowsky circle as Ravel and Respighi. In New York you would find most frequently, among musicians,
Rachmaninov, stravinsky, and Gershwin, Hofmann, Pachmann, Lhevinne, and [Artur]
Rubinstein, Casals, Kreisler, Elman, and Heifetz. Once anyone entered Godowsky's
door, he became a disciple: short and round, Godowsky suggested a slavic Buddha
but with none of the timeless, resolved placidity of a saint. He had an
encyclopedic knowledge and a jolly, insatiably curious mind. He loved mental
fireworks, and his beaming blue eyes sparkled, his pot belly quivered through
the smoke of verbal battle ...He was the merciless mentor of every artist who played
for him; his compositional style of piano writing influenced nearly every
contemporary who wrote for the instrument, and especially Medtner, Prokofiev,
Rachmaninov, and Ravel" (Speaking of Pianists , New York 1957).
The 28 pieces here
included, spanning nearly fifty years, reveal an imaginative, unpretentious
mind, they confirm a consummate, lyrical miniaturist, cadentially indulgent,
interested in piano sound and articulation, in spacing and timbre, in a lattice-work
of intertwining voices and chromatic acid, more open-spaced than the
"close-range" polyphony of Bach. Romantically free yet classically
structured, sometimes slight yet rarely trivial, they belong to an evocative
experience of intimate gesture and perfumed grace, a dimension removed from the
titanic trajectory of the more celebrated Godowsky.
Composed in 1927, inscribed
to a devoted Irish/ Australian admirer Paul Howard, the first three Poems
(Devotion, E major, Andante cantabile, 29th June; Avowal,
D flat major, Moderato, cantabi!e, 25th July; Adoration,
D flat major, Cantabile ed appassionato, 8th July) were
completed in Evanson, Illinois, where Godowsky was spending the summer in the
lakeside home of his friend and former student, Maurice Aronson. Written later
in Paris, the fourth (Yearning, F sharp
major, Moderato assai, 30th June 1931) asks a question:
"Who can fathom the indefinable, tearful longings of a passionate soul?".
Tender, nostalgic music of old-world half-lights resonant of late Brahms and
Skryabin touched by Rachmaninov, here, says his biographer Jeremy Nicholas
(1989), is "some of Godowsky's most heartfelt self-expression ...it was to
these pieces that he invariably turned in later years when, left alone, he
played quietly to himself". The first three he himself introduced to London at the Queen's Hall recital (14th Apri11928) which
included the British first performance of the B minor Passacaglia on
Schubert's Unfinished Symphony, his last major opus. At Heifetz's
request Avowal was subsequently arranged for violin and piano.
Dedicated to his
older compatriot and friend, the incandescent Moritz Rosenthai, the G flat Toccata
Op. 13 (published Boston 5th April 1899), was a re-working, a
semitone up, of the Moto Perpetuo in F major of a decade earlier.
A relentless "perpetual motion" shower of right-hand sextuplet
semiquavers (Prestissimo - egualmente) with an interesting
"double" left-hand part of tenor melody and bass support (Godowsky's
left hand was always well developed), its dexterous digitality is more related
to the gossamer froth of a Scarlatti or Mendelssohn than Schumann's mechanics
or the percussive new-age motorism of Prokofiev.
Originally the Three
Pieces Op. 14 (published New
York 12th -14th
August 1899) consisted of four numbers, an unissued Mazurka melancolique having
come between the first two printed movements. Twilight-musing (E flat
major, Andante placido) - a revision of the first piece (Impressions
sur le fleuve de Hudson) of an earlier cycle, Twilight Thoughts (Paris
1889) - stylistically crosses a post-Chopin nocturne with a pre-Rachmaninov
prelude. Valse-Idylle (E major, Allegretto grazioso, with a trio
episode oscillating between G major and the tonic minor) and Scherzino (C sharp
minor, Allegro vivace e capriccioso) both flirt with Chopinesque ideas
and patterns - with just a glimmer perhaps of Schumannesque tension distilled
through Brahms in the duple-time cross-rhythms of the latter.
Consisting of a
gravely phrased, dotted rhythm Sarabande (C sharp minor, Larghetto
espressivo, dedicated to the Chicago critic W.S.B. Mathews), a Minuet (A flat
major, Allegretto grazioso, with a faster trio in the tonic minor, Piu Animato,
the whole relishing a good deal of left-hand melody, cf the Toccata
Op. 13), and a Courante (E minor, Allegro, with varied reprise and a
central section in the tonic major based on a rhythmic/modal transformation of
the opening eight right-hand notes), the Three Pieces Op.12 (published
New York 14thAugust 1899, together with Opp. 11, 14) comprise a neatly
crafted baroque dance homage. Real music, not pastiche.
Unlike Renaissance
(1906-09) - old harpsichord music reborn for the modern grand piano - Airs
of the Eighteenth Century (published New York 3rd April1937,
with French subtitles) are brief, simple transcriptions, albeit subtle,
detailed and not without the occasional tell-tale piquancy. Seven movements
make up the collection, each addressing a different technical issue. [12] Exaudet's
Minuet (G major, Allegretto grazioso, light staccato, with the odd
sustained phrase). [13] Lisette (G major, Andantino, sustained
legato in both hands). [14] Good Old Granny (A minor, Allegretto, legato
melody, staccato accompaniment). [15] Mother, please explain (D minor, Un
poco allegretto, staccato/legato contrasts; the second half, in the major
with attentive left-hand work, predominantly legato). [16] Capricious
Shepherd-Maid (G major, Un poco allegretto , legato/ staccato
alternation between hands). [17] Would that I were the lowly fern (credited
to Pergolesi [1710-36]; G minor, Andante, sustained legato in both
hands. [18] Oh, come again, beautiful spring (F major, Allegretto
grazioso, contrasted passages of crisp leggiero staccato and dolce
legato melody).
"Despite his
wide and fabled learning," Nicholas says, Godowsky "derived no
musical inspiration from literature and very little from painting. His main
sources of stimulation came from other piano music, dance rhythms (especially
the waltz [viz his dizzy response to Weber and Johann Strauss]) and the
sights and sounds of the various countries of the world through which he
passed". Written in New
York City in 1928, a year
after the Passacaglia, the Two Waltz Poems (G major, Allegretto
espressivo [slow one-in-a-bar], 21st October; A major, Moderato assai [quick
three-in-a-bar], 17th November) are extended, progressively complex concert
pieces -in the Ravellian sense more evocations of feeling than music for
dancing. Each opens simply (deceptively so), reach an emotional, texturally
intricate climax, and then, like Schumann's night-watchman, fade away into
smoky, autumn silence. Existing also in versions for violin and piano
(published a week earlier, 17th Apri11929, dedicated respectively to Heifetz
and Kochartski), Godowsky later adapted both a semitone lower as Nos 1 and 5 of
his set of six Waltz-Poems for the left hand (Paris 15th May,
Vienna 18th May 1929).
Of the Three
Pieces Op 15 (published Boston 29th August 1899), the second - Nuit de
printemps, the original second movement of the earlier Tu'ilight
Thoughts suite (1889) - was unissued, leaving just No 1 ([21] Melodie
meditative, E flat major, Andante espressivo) and No 3 ([22] Capriccio
in C minor, Allegretto scherzaudo). Dedicated to Frieda Godowsky,
the composer's wife and childhood sweetheart, the Melodie, in the form
of a ritornello and aria (so marked in the score), suggests a blend of religioso
Grieg and Brahms interinezzo accompanied and cadenced by Chopin.
Anticipating things in Medtner, the Capriccio, inscribed to the Liszt
pupil Richard Burmeister, is a five-part rondo, based on a leggierissimo rhythmic/melodic
refrain (shades of the fourth Dvorak Slavonic Dance) variously repeated,
developed and counterpointed. How the episodes - the first in F sharp minor (dolce),
the second in E flat major (semplice e con tenerezza , on new
material)' - artfully modulate back to the home key make one conscious, time
and again; of a genuine compositional sensibility at work, not just a clever
pianist. There are no easy tricks here, no gratuitous effects. Old master
quality informs the introspective coda, a beautifully judged page of dialogue,
phrasing and low pedal tones.
In
August/September 1918 Godowsky published a progressively graded anthology of 46
Miniatures for piano duet -educational material to be shared between
pupil and teacher, admired (and played) by the likes no less of Hofmann,
Rachmaninov and Bruno Walter. “My aim is to interest while I instruct;
to educate while I entertain”. In his foreword he confirmed how he had “given a
great deal of thought and loving care to them and though the pieces are smaller
and considerably less complicated than anything I have ever written, they
represent the best there is in me. The experience and assimilated knowledge,
the aims and aspirations, the hopes and ideals, the disappointments and yearnings
of a sensitive nature and an artist's soul are all to be found in this series
of simple five-finger pieces”. The Five Miniatures recorded here are
solo arrangements of numbers drawn from the six volumes of the collection. In
their almost orchestrally-differentiated textures, contrasts of register,
distinctions between pedalled and dry sound, attack, touch and dynamic finesse,
their bravura is of a type more to do with technical security and
transcendental control than physical display or extravagance of gesture.
Godowsky was never a pianist to “shout”. Popular with audiences (the composer
himself cutting an Ampico “expression” roll), the polka-like Humoresque (Vol
VI/xv, B flat major, Allegretto grazioso, published New York 14th
September 1918) was dedicated to the Polish/ American Alexander Lambert -who
nearly thirty years before, as Director of the New York College of Music, had
employed Godowsky, newly wed, to teach piano for $10.50 a week. Rigaudon (Vol
II/iii, C major, Allegro con spirito, 14th September 1918) and The
Miller's Song (Vol IV/ii, C major, Allegretto, 16th August 1920)
paraphrase respectively uancient danceu and Schubertian Lied. Processional
March (Vol IV /vi, G major, Maestoso, 26th August 1920) is a
study in effect and detail, the composer's exact markings never letting us
forget how the pianist's art is as much one of foot-response as fingerwork.
Softly kissing a single note, Arabian Chant (Orientale) (Vol V /viii,
modal E minor, Placido, 26th August 1920) takes a lascive tune
and caressing triplets to create a fragrant, bass-rich cameo of sweetly
unveiled love.
In relation to the
epic vision of Chopin or the thundering heroics of Liszt, the youthful, cliched
Polonaise in C major (published Paris
1889, with a dedication to Eugend' Albert) is about as contrived and
uncomfortable as Beethoven's Op. 89. Yet while critics will argue its tonal
tedium and note-spinning, admirers will thrill to the intensifying climax and
resolution of its closing pages {from the E flat grandio50 - a skilful blending
of introductory material and principal refrain), no less than piano - philes will
relish its confirmation that even as a boy Godowsky must have had a quite
remarkable left hand. A curious sound feature, reminiscent of the Alkan solo Concerto,
is the recurrent low register presence of repeated octaves, octave
tremolandi and quasi-octave tri1ls.
“My piano music is like an orchestra, with
different independent voices played by different instruments. It requires tonal
discrimination... [My compositions have] many voices (like Bach) and... genuine
piano quality (like Chopin). If you bear this in mind, you have the key to
their interpretation” (letter, Ber1in 21st July 1931).